2018 was a milestone year on our journey to building a NO KILL community. You stepped up and helped us make significant progress. Since 2014, we've made significant progress towards making Greenville County a NO KILL community. WE'RE SO CLOSE! We only need to adopt ONE more pet per day in 2019 to achieve NO KILL status.

You Can't Put A Price on Your Best Friend Posted: 10/18/18 8:58 PM by Paula Church

I remember playing with a bunch of neighborhood kids one day back in my childhood, when suddenly this one kid comes running up to everyone yelling “Hey – someone is selling a puppy for free down the street!” We immediately followed him to the spot where a woman had a (really cute) mixed breed puppy - the last one from an unwanted litter. While I have no idea how many were in the litter or in what type of homes they ended up, I do know this free puppy became the pet of my f ...

A Day in the Life of an Animal Rescue Coordinator Posted: 09/12/18 9:11 AM by Andrea Sams

My name is Andrea Sams and I am an Animal Rescue Coordinator. I’ve been called on to help cats out of trees, rescue baby birds that fell out of nests, catch farm animals who wandered out onto the highway, and much more. But that’s not what I do. In a nutshell, I’m responsible for recruiting and managing relationships with our dog adoption partners, most who are privately run animal rescue groups, and coordinating with them to speed u ...

"Things" and How They Save Lives Posted: 08/07/18 2:34 PM by Paula Church

People and pets are what really matter, but sometimes the “things” are important, too.

Do you actually understand the size and scope of the entire Animal Care physical operation?

Yes, it’s a campus…and it’s large. In fact, I’m not sure those who visit Animal Care fully understand all of the amazing “things” that happen on campus every day. The size and scope of our facility is symbolic of the tremendous investment Greenville County (and theref ...

As much as we hate to admit it, most of us have a dog or cat bias. Maybe a few of you have a passion for both, but when given the opportunity to ask large groups if they are dog or cat people, it is always overwhelmingly one or the other. So here I am, a dog person with a history of fostering - wait for it - kittens! Yep. I am that person. Not to mention my other obstacles: my dog, Winnie, a wire haired fox terrier, doesn’t know the difference between a kitten or small rat; I have a full time job; I am not about to give up annual vacations; and most of all, I am highly allergic to cats! So how does a dog person like me end up fosteri ...

Shelter Animals Deserve Care Too… And They Get It Posted: 02/21/18 1:37 PM by Shelly Simmons

Rosco, like many animals at our shelter, is a survivor. He had extensive wounds to the left side of his face when he was brought to Animal Care. Despite his very painful injuries, this amazing dog greeted our medical staff wagging his tail and eagerly welcomed our gentle hands to pet him. I don’t think we ever get used to how remarkable it is when an a ...

I moved from Ohio to Greenville County in 2007. Before I moved, I worked at an animal shelter that took in about 4,000 animals each year and I always felt that our shelter was flooded with incoming animals, there were never enough families coming in for their lost pets, not enough people in the community adopting, and not near enough low-cost spay-neuter options around to tackle the problem. When I toured Greenville County’s animal shelter for the first time, saw all of the cages and kennels full of dogs and cats, and talked with the staff about the number of animals entering through the doors of this shelter, I was speechless.

20,000 lost and homeless animals were coming through these doors. 20,000! Before I worked at an animal shelter, I would never be able to visualize what 20,000 dogs and cats looked like, so I’m going to imagine that many of you reading this also cannot visualize this. This is what 20,000 animals looks like (with each dot representing one animal):

2017 marked year 2 of our mission to build a NO KILL community. With the help of our volunteers, donors, staff and adopters, some amazing progress was made. As you'll see in the infographic below, our numbers were staggering. Thanks to the addition of our new kitten nursery and the new offering of free spay/neuter for large dogs, we were able to reduce the population of unwanted pets and save an even higher percentage of animals than ever before. That's something worth thanking you for! We absolutely, positively, 100% can't do this work without your continued help.

You know Greenville County Animal Care as your local animal shelter. You probably don’t know us as a disaster relief center. We partner with several national and regional organizations to assist with disaster relief in times of need. When Hurricane Irma appeared to be headed for the southeast, our team sprang into action.

On a regional level, we have a partnership with Charleston Animal Society. When they need our aid because their facility is being evacuated or because they are assisting other low-country shelters in evacuating and they contact us for help to move animals from those high-risk areas, we work with them h ...

One of the biggest hurdles to building a NO KILL community is heartworm disease. Since heartworms are spread by mosquitoes, it’s pretty rampant in the Southeast! 25% of dogs entering our shelter are infected with heartworms. It’s easy to see, we can never be a NO KILL shelter without addressing how we save these dogs and get them adopted. It is a big undertaking not just because it is so common, but because it is so deadly, so expensive, and so time consuming to treat! The treatment for a 50lb dog even at our cost is about $565 and takes a minimum of 3 months to complete when following the American ...

I wrote last about how I began my fostering journey with my precious Itty Bitty kitties. I couldn't stop there though, or you would miss some of the amazing, heartwarming things that we accomplished for the love of kitties. As you can see, I am crazy about cats. It didn't take long after I started my job for the shelter staff to figure that out either. Soon, when a kitten was in desperate need of help, I began to be the one people came to.

I wanted to share my foster kitty stories with you all so that maybe you would join me in the fun! I debated about which kitties to start my blog with, and decided to begin where I started my own foster adventure. I heard that the itty bitty kitties (1 to 2 lb kittens) were most at risk in the shelter at one of our staff meetings. It broke my heart and led me to seek out how I could help. I decided to foster because they needed me, but I needed them too. I saw the side benefit for myself and my 3 kids of always having kittens to enjoy. When I adopt, my kittens become cats. I love my cats, but they ...

I have wanted to be a veterinarian for as long as I can remember. I did not plan on or envision myself here at Greenville County Animal Care, though. I always dreamed of owning my own practice one day, and had my eye set on that for the first 10 years of practice.

You Don’t Have to Take Them All…Just One Posted: 06/21/17 1:54 PM by Shelly Simmons

One of the most common things people say to me when they run into me at the grocery store or anywhere else I might be before or after work wearing my blue scrubs with my Animal Care logo is, “Oh my, I don’t know how you work there. I would take them all home if I even walked inside!”

For many people, there is an immediate reaction to feel sad and sorry for animals in shelters, and I get it. They are homeless, and that’s sad. But they are homeless because people aren’t coming into the shelters, looking at them, naturally falling in love with them, and leaving with them. They hold back on the ...

Growing up, my two sisters and I never had a dog. We were a cat family. Well, actually, my parents told us that we did once have a dog when we were all very little. His name was Mutley and he was a snow white Eskimo Spitz but supposedly so mean he had horns holding up his halo. We were all so traumatized by his reign of terror that we decided to take up kitty cats instead. We didn’t go wrong there. We enjoyed many great feline friends over the years without a single trip to the doctor for stitches or therapy.

When I turned “adult” and moved out and into my own apartment and sta ...

Let me tell you two sad stories. I am not relaying these stories because I want our readers to be sad, though. I am sharing them so that our readers will better understand what it is we do at Animal Care to help animals and people, and the challenges we face as we try to build a no-kill community. Once I tell you about them, I’m hoping that I can get your help sharing these stories and the important message that goes along with them to your friends, family, co-workers, and others.

On Tuesday, April 25, 2017, a silver-colored mixed breed puppy came into the shelter with an injury. The puppy had a stick ...

Tails and Trails Funds Second Chance and Kicks off Summer Long Life-Saving Event Posted: 05/11/17 9:40 AM by Shelly Simmons

The 3rd annual Tails & Trails 5K Run/Walk to benefit Greenville County Animal Care may be over, but the money raised from this fundraiser will be there for months to come and will help replenish the Second Chance Fund and build a no-kill community in Greenville County.

Tails & Trails has gone from less than 200 attendees in its first year to nearly 500 attendees in its third year! We all know the Upstate is flooded with 5K opportunities for our community. To see that rate of growth for a 5K fundraiser in just three years is almost unheard of; which clearly shows that our community stands be ...

In December 2016, Animal Care announced that we are now in a fellowship with a national organization called Target Zero to aggressively implement recommended strategies that helps decrease shelter intake and increase live release rates with the goal of building and maintaining a “No-Kill Community”.

But what is “No-Kill”? For the last decade or so, we have all been inundated by the no-kill movement. If you ask five people on the street, “What does ‘No-Kill’ mean to you?” you’ll get five very different answers. Because we need our community to be 100% committed ...